how to remove very visible seams?

flipside8404

Can somebody give me some input on how to minimize or remove visible seams on my model? Is it the way I am unwrapping? (Maya)...I tried baking out normals from Xnormal/Topogun/Zbrush but all of the normals are showing very visible seams..any help is appreciated..[IMG][/img][IMG][/img] [IMG][/img]

PyrZern

Do you bake with triangulated mesh with cage ? Do you harden normal along the seams ?

Fwap

Try flipping your green channel of your normal map.
Also make sure you have hard vertex normals at UV borders.
For Maya, this script helps: http://jonathonstewart.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/script-harden-edges-of-all-uv-borders.html

Obscura

Fwap wrote: »

Also make sure you have hard vertex normals at UV borders.

You don't want this in case of a character.

flipside8404

PyrZern wrote: »

Do you bake with triangulated mesh with cage ? Do you harden normal along the seams ?

- triangulating it fixes the seams!
- I need to read more about the custom cages, when I bake (usually topogun) I just adjust the cage slider and make sure it encompass the hi poly and low poly, re bake (adjusting the cage slider) if there's too much artifacts on the normal, (is there a better way to do this? or how do I make a custom cages)
- I read through the forums regarding hardening the normal along the seams and found link for scripts to do this, but how do I manually do this (steps)...I dont know much about scripting and I want to learn whats the process of hardening those specific normals (I am using Maya 2016 by the way)

Thank you so much! Your question definitely got me researching for specific topic/techniques

flipside8404

Fwap wrote: »

Try flipping your green channel of your normal map.
Also make sure you have hard vertex normals at UV borders.
For Maya, this script helps: http://jonathonstewart.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/script-harden-edges-of-all-uv-borders.html

Thanks for the input. I tried flipping the green channel but still getting the visible seams.

flipside8404

Obscura wrote: »

You don't want this in case of a character.

Obscura, how would you go about treating/modifying the seams on organic models? Are hardening the normals along UV borders works specifically on hard surface? Thanks.

Fwap

Obscura wrote: »

You don't want this in case of a character.

It's situational, and in this instance worth a try.

noosence

So this might be completely wrong, but are you duplicating the normal from the other arm? If so have you moved the duplicated arm over 1 UV unit?

*EDIT* Also to create a cage within maya just duplicate your LP mesh, then select all vertices, change the movement from object to normal then expand them out so they encompass the HP mesh. Then with all the vertices selected go "Average vertices" and to be safe select all edges and make them soft edges. (Sometimes for me Maya doesn't always soften the edges for some reason when I average vertices, which seems counter intuitive)

PyrZern

flipside8404 wrote: »

- yes, I triangulated the mesh before the bake
- I need to read more about the custom cages, when I bake (usually topogun) I just adjust the cage slider and make sure it encompass the hi poly and low poly, re bake (adjusting the cage slider) if there's too much artifacts on the normal, (is there a better way to do this? or how do I make a custom cages)
- I read through the forums regarding hardening the normal along the seams and found link for scripts to do this, but how do I manually do this (steps)...I dont know much about scripting and I want to learn whats the process of hardening those specific normals (I am using Maya 2016 by the way)

Thank you so much! Your question definitely got me researching for specific topic/techniques

I usually inflate the tris cage in Zbrush manually. Then bake the tris mesh and the tris cage in xNormal.

flipside8404

noosence wrote: »

So this might be completely wrong, but are you duplicating the normal from the other arm? If so have you moved the duplicated arm over 1 UV unit?

*EDIT* Also to create a cage within maya just duplicate your LP mesh, then select all vertices, change the movement from object to normal then expand them out so they encompass the HP mesh. Then with all the vertices selected go "Average vertices" and to be safe select all edges and make them soft edges. (Sometimes for me Maya doesn't always soften the edges for some reason when I average vertices, which seems counter intuitive)

Both arms have very noticeable seams, and no its not duplicated. But this is good to know just in case I run in with something like that in the future. Thanks.